


Do you hear it calling

by ChestnutBrumby



Category: Captain America (Movies), Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, DID I MENTION SPOILERS, Guys there are seriously spoilers within, Infinity Stone Soul World (Marvel), Minor Wanda Maximoff/Vision, Spoilers, Wanda and team friendships, scarlet vision - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-24
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2020-01-25 21:19:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18582778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChestnutBrumby/pseuds/ChestnutBrumby
Summary: Wanda's time in the Soul World with the other victims. Loki is forever the God of Mischief and even Wanda cannot guess at his motives for helping her.Takes place just before, during and just after Endgame. In case you missed it there are MAJOR SPOILERS.





	1. Price of Freedom

**Author's Note:**

> I actually had ideas for a fanfic I hoped I'd have time to write in between Infinity War and Endgame, but clearly I didn't actually have said time. It was going to be called 'Ten Years' as both a tribute to Marvel going strong for the same amount of time, and because I believed Endgame would take place some time after Thanos attacked. Hey look, I can't even type his name without getting angry even now. So anyway, some of this is my response to seeing Endgame and some of it uses the ideas I had for Ten Years. I'm so sorry I fell off the face of the planet and can't promise it won't happen again, but I still think about my wonderful fandom friends here. Here we go - **higher further faster** , guys.

Time inside the Soul World wasn't the same, so Wanda couldn't pinpoint when it started. Sleep too was different, because down here nobody got tired, nobody needed to actually lie down and use whatever was handy - a cloak or an arm or a friend willing enough - as a pillow. It didn't happen. Wanda thought of what did happen as zoning out, daydreaming of sorts. It got so she quickly began to realize people's tells when they all did so. Lilah and Cooper sat back to back, propping each other up. Hope stayed standing up and only the relaxed set of her shoulders indicated her guard was relatively down. Sam always leaned an elbow against something, or someone (Bucky was a frequent target). Stephen Strange sat cross-legged with his palms lightly on his knees. She'd seen him try to summon his magic with the same pose, but it never worked.  
  
Not here.  
  
T'Challa always climbed a tree. He didn't have his powers in the Soul World any the others did, with one exception Wanda knew of, but he retained his agility. Peter Parker mumbled to himself when he zoned out - Wanda knew all the names of his classmates and friends without needing to look inside his head for it.  
  
But when Wanda zoned out, she heard a voice. It was always just beyond the reach of her senses, even her magic. But her eyes always snapped open, and she uneasily scanned the area, as if somebody new might unexpectedly be here.  
  
They weren't always together, sometimes out of sight beyond orange-tinted pools of water or the scant structures that existed here - the Avengers, Guardians, and people related to them. Laura kept her family together, but the kids were curious, especially Nathanial, and it was hard to keep him away from the Guardians in particular. Wanda babysat a lot, but it twisted her heart because Vision had of course always been at her side whenever she watched the Barton kids in the real world. Peter Quill spent long stretches of time alone. Sometimes Wanda heard Drax yelling at him to be more involved. Peter never yelled back, but lately she had noticed he made more of an effort to come and bolster the others. Nick Fury barely spoke to anybody, and his expression maintained a front so thunderous that only Stephen was brave (stupid?) enough to even try to speak to him. Shuri and Peter quickly became fast friends, Sam and Bucky of course gravitated together, as did Groot, Drax and Mantis. Wanda had always thought T'Challa and Hope were an odd couple, but when she caught what they were saying to one another she realized the pair were constantly scheming for ways to get out. Everyone was sort of doing that though in their own way, with the exception of Stephen Strange and Janet Van Dyme.  
  
Wanda kept a sharp eye on that.  
  
It was something of a surprise when she came to, teeth clenched tighter together as the sound of a voice she couldn't make out, and as if he knew something was wrong Bucky came and settled beside her.  
  
"You okay?"  
  
He accepted it when she shook her head in answer to his question. Bucky was good like that. It was easy for Wanda to see why Steve liked him so much.  
  
"I hate this light." She told him. Bucky was a man she knew yet didn't know well. With her help, Steve had spent years looking for him. He'd talked about Bucky some, but it certainly wasn't the same as sharing some fanta-colored purgatory with him. Before the Infinity War, she had known him only a short time and all of that had been spent frantically trying to find a way to save Vision. It was only here had they begun to befriend one another.  
   
"I know what you mean." They were quiet for a moment. Bucky spoke again.  
  
"Everyone assumed I was just... _asleep_ when they put me under. But I wasn't. I couldn't move or speak, but my mind... it's exactly like this is. I feel powerless in exactly the same way. Trapped. Waiting."  
  
She understood him, but his word choice made her uncomfortable. To distract them both she murmured a few words of Romanian to him, and was rewarded when his blue eyes lit up and he replied in kind. Bucky liked the reminder that some of the things HYDRA had taught him were comforting to others.  
  
After they fell silent again, Bucky studied his left arm. Here the Soul World, he had two flesh and blood arms. "Is it weird that I miss the metal?"  
  
"It was only a part of you, Bucky. Something other people did to you, not something you chose for yourself. It doesn't define you."  
  
"You sound-" He cut himself off and the tiny hint of a smile froze and shattered off of his features to leave his expression stricken. They both knew what he'd almost said.  
  
Wanda reached out and closed one of her hands over his larger one. She was sitting on his left, so that was the one her fingers curved over. It was the first hand she'd reached for since the loss of Vision and she felt a sharp pang that it wasn't his smooth skin and long fingers underneath her own. Bucky dropped his head, hair forming a curtain. But his fingers closed around hers, hanging onto Wanda like a lifeline. He didn't look at her, but they sat in silence for a timeless period before he got up, pressed a very big-brother kiss to her temple that made her heart cry out for Steve for the thousandth time, then left.    
   
How many messes had Steve Rogers bailed her out of? Wanda felt herself zoning out to the memories of their training, of the time of her greatest happiness when she and Vision had fallen in love, when they trained with the team and were entrusted with the safety of the entire world.  
  
Before she failed the people she loved most.     
  
When she came to, it was to the sound of a voice, calling for her with words she couldn't hear.  
  
She flew up quite literally, leaving the ground, palms glowing scarlet. Some of the others were close enough to see. Mantis let out a shriek and pointed, calling the other's attention. "She can fly!". The Barton kids were all yelling and she could make out Lilah's words. "Auntie Wanda!" There was a string of cusses from Peter Quill and a quiet "I am Groot", but Wanda didn't stick around any longer. None of these voices were the one she could never quite hear. She sailed to a safe distance then blasted the empty ground across from them with an explosive hex bolt, but once the dust and orange water settled, the landscape reformed to what it had been previously.  
  
How Wanda hated it here. 


	2. Higher Further Faster

Sam was the first one to come and talk to her. 

"Wanda. How long have you been able to use your powers down here?" The nicest thing about Sam was that he wasn't afraid of her, and reached out to rest a hand on her shoulder. She glared at the water underfoot and didn't answer. 

"Wanda - Stephen. Janet. Mantis. T'Challa. Groot. None of them have any powers down here - why do you think that you do?" She shrugged him off, expression mutinous. 

"It doesn't matter Sam. I can't use them to get us out. I've tried." She turned and stalked directly away from him, and she heard Bucky stop Sam from coming after her. 

When she came back to the fringes of rejoining the others, days or weeks later, Wanda saw that Peter Quill had approached Peter Parker. He was holding out his walkman to the boy, two brown-haired heads bent over the device. Wanda recalled the day Pietro came home with one of those and a bittersweet smile threatened. 

He'd been so absurdly proud over the outdated tech. And she would have given anything, anything, to hear his voice again. She wasn't ready for this yet, being back around the others. T'Challa was the only one who noticed her, and she met his gaze for a moment before she turned away. He smiled sadly, and did not come after her. 

It was only when she was alone she saw the glimmer of emerald green light. She thought it was Stephen miraculously regaining his magic, but then a face she knew from various Avengers files appeared in her field of vision. 

Subscribing in this instance to _better safe than sorry_ , she called forth a glowing crimson orb and held it as the ready just in case he tried anything. Calculating blue eyes looked back at her as he raised a hand in a peaceable gesture. Then they lit up and he smiled, a handsome but decidedly devilish smile. 

"You. You have a connection with one of the stones - one I know well. The mindstone, yes?" 

Wanda's expression didn't vary. "Why do you care, God of Mischief?" She hated that the title brought a look of pride onto Loki's features. 

"Whoever said I cared?" He replied, answering a question with a question. But there was something... something stopping her from hurtling her hex ball into his face. 

"How are you here?" She questioned. "I thought only the dead could be here. Unless we were wrong about that." 

"Oh no, you are indeed right, everybody here is quite dead. Except me. Don't worry, I can help you find a way back to life though, if you work with me. Oh, don't look so shocked, I've done it before." 

That was a lot to take in, especially when British accents only made her think of one person, but Wanda didn't trust him for a second. 

"Are you in the business of helping others?" 

"No I'm in the business of helping myself." 

There was a long pause as the Scarlet Witch and the God of Mischief looked evenly at one another, sizing one another up. Wanda found herself wishing Bucky or Sam would wander over and find her. Even Mantis's awkward questions or Nick Fury's imposing silence would have been welcome. 

Loki snapped his fingers. Wanda flinched slightly as he did. "Ah yes, I recall now. The Mindstone did come into the possession of some machine or other you humans designed, isn't that right?" 

Wanda's eyes lit crimson, a warning that anybody else here would have known to pay attention to. "Do not. Call him. A machine." Her syllables turned short and clipped, a trace of her accent bleeding through her steely tone. 

"I don't threaten." Loki assured her calmly, clearly unfazed by whatever magic tricks she could summon. "If I insulted your robotic bo-" 

With a flick of her wrist too swift for even Loki's sharp eyes to follow Wanda engulfed him completely in a crimson cloud. Loki didn't panic, but he did frown when he waved his hands to dissipate the magic wrapping him up and nothing happened. Nothing of his own volition, anyway. 

"This hasn't happened befooooooooooooooore!" Wanda shot him skyward at a truly impressive rate. Powerless, Loki counted to nine before she let him go. Suspended for a second in midair, Loki thoughtfully mused to nobody in particular. "I like her." 

He came crashing back down. Quite literally, impacting the red earth with a thud. When he came to his senses, he found the witch standing over him, glaring, with a faint trace of scarlet in her irises. 

"Or a robot." 

Loki wasn't entirely an idiot. "Noted." 

"I'll work with you. But any time you annoy me, I'm going to do that. And each time I'll make you go higher, fall further, and hit faster." She warned, her accent really strong now. 

"What is your name?

"Wanda. Wanda Maximoff." 

"How would you like to get out of here, Wanda Maximoff?"


	3. On Your Left

"Concentrate Wanda." The arrogance and impatience in Loki's voice reminded Wanda of when Tony Stark would butt in on one of Steve or Natasha's training sessions. She felt a pang. Somehow even though Nathanial was named for her, Wanda didn't think of Natasha often, and was surprised to now. She missed Nat dearly. It made her redouble her efforts against her tutor. 

Her eyes glowed fierce and crimson as she surrounded Loki with a hex bubble that wiped the smile from his face. She tightened it like ropes around his body, until he crashed down at her feet, looking peevish but resigned to being overpowered by his student. 

"How is my concentration now?" She waited a few seconds before releasing him. 

"Much better." It wasn't showing in his princely, well-guarded expression, but nobody could entirely hide their emotions from Wanda Maximoff. Loki was just a tiny bit impressed. And was that... no, not fear, nothing so advanced. Apprehension though... 

Wanda hadn't told the others about training with Loki. Hers were the only hopes she would risk being dashed. She was well aware that Sam, Bucky and T'Challa all knew there was something up with her, but bless them, they didn't try to follow her, nor push her to talk about it. 

Her boys meant the world to Wanda. Even here. Maybe especially here. 

It was Groot who came to Wanda when she next ventured to the others after another session. Sam and Bucky were sitting close together, voices low, the undercurrent of their emotions spiking between frustration and regret. Both were common things to feel coming from the two ex-soldiers. Peters Quill and Parker were sharing the walkman, a small nostaligc smile on the younger's face, a sad one on the older. Wanda watched as he brushed the back of his hand under one eye then looked away angrily. At least Drax's suggestions - though it was likely too kind to call them such - had taken hold. Star-Lord spent more time with the others lately. Wanda hoped it would do him some good. 

Wanda felt uncomfortable though when Stephen Strange's gaze passed over her. There was something in those dark eyes of his... something knowing. Something that made her decidedly wary of the wizard she may have in different circumstances learned a lot from. 

Pretty laughable as thoughts went when she considered who her current teacher was. 

"Are you all right, Groot?" She was more used to holding conversations with Sam, Bucky and T'Challa, but speaking to Groot didn't pose the same limitations to Wanda as it did many of the others. 

"I am Groot." 

She hummed softly, her head dipping in a single nod. "Me, too." 

"I am Groot." 

"My brother. His name was Pietro. He's actually - the little boy who follows you around whenever he can, he is named after him. Pietro saved his father, so they're named him Nathaniel Pietro." 

"I am Groot." Before he spoke, Groot did cast a quick glance to the others to check nobody else saw the faint softening of the stoic teenage expression he habitually wore. Wanda smiled. 

"Yes. He was." 

"I am Groot." 

She hesitated before answering that one. "I'm not sure yet." 

"I am Groot." 

"Me as well, Groot. Me as well." She wasn't quite up to the touchy stage with anybody outside of Bucky and Sam, so she didn't pat him on the shoulder, but she projected the mental image into his head and he smiled up at her. 

"How is this helping me get out of here?" She demanded after her and Loki's next session. The lines of his face were familiar to her by this stage, the way he looked side-on and always had a smirk lingering somewhere close. 

"This is more _just_ helping you." 

Wanda did not have the patience to entertain even a god. Her eyes glimmered, her lips a hard line. 

"I'm doing this for the others. If there's no hope for them, you better tell me now." Or she would come right into his head and find out herself, and if he was comatose afterwards, so be it. 

"Hope can be a fool's errand. Nevertheless, I may have some to spare." 

Wanda completely froze. 

Loki held out a closed fist, then with a flourish turned it over and opened his fingers. Wanda stared in disbelief at the blue stone in his hand. "Wait, what-" 

Loki looked at her, expression crafty, judging the exact moment she was going to unfreeze. "It isn't me. The voice you hear while at rest." 

He vanished in a glimmer of emerald magic before Wanda could figure out whether to choke him or hug him. 

 

Loki didn't come back again. Wanda had questions, and she alternated between being on her own in her fury or with the voice in her head, then spending time with the others. Nestling Nathaniel in her arms and telling him stories, talking to Groot, being around Sam and Bucky, mostly quiet. She wondered if she could figure out how to use her magic to figure out how much time had passed. 

It was funny that as she was thinking of asking Stephen Strange that the wizard approached her, her expression gentle, keeling at her side. In the distance, Wanda felt something. Not the voice that called to her when she zoned out. A sense that something had shifted in the fabric of everything she knew, like tiny hairline fractures in a pain of glass. 

She found herself listening for the unknown voice at the fringes of her own limitation. 

"Wanda. It's time." She looked to Stephen without comprehension. 

"I don't understand-" 

"Close your eyes." It was only because Sam and Bucky appeared behind her like overprotective bodyguards she trusted him enough to do so. They wouldn't let anything happen to her. She knew it inherently. 

With her eyes closed, the threads of power became obvious. Cables of crimson and golden and green, all weaving together, lights behind her eyelids she was certain she could grasp as if they were tangible. She could almost hear Loki's laughing encouragement, though she knew he wasn't there. She felt energy run through her hands. She saw red around the edges of her closed lids. Heard the sparks of somebody else using magic.

"Woah!" 

Wanda opened her eyes. There were exclamations from the assembled group as Stephen Strange straightened up and addressed the group. "Get ready everybody. Cap needs us!" He called, and made circular gestures with his scarred hands, golden glyphs lighting up around him. Peter Quill swore in astonishment. Laura clutched Cooper and Lilah to her. Nathanial avidly clapped his hands. 

Wanda felt the foundations fracture even more. This was the first time Stephen Strange had been able to use his powers in the Soul World. 

"Wanda!" Bucky had a bemused look on his face as he called to her as if he didn't quite know why he was doing it. But that was fine. Wanda understood. She just saw it in her mind's eye, and the next instant the gleaming vibranium arm Shuri had made for Bucky was back in place. Wanda didn't stop there. Magic flowed through her as she equipped everybody for the coming fight she understood in that second was occurring. She could see it all as clearly as if she were there, but the calm that swirled around her in that moment was absolute. It wouldn't be long now. Time had begun to return to something she recognized. Uniforms and suits, weapons and armor all appeared. 

And then as the fractures grew deeper, just as she thought she might just be able to make out who the voice who had been calling to her all this time belonged to, she became aware of somebody else. Her mind reached out across an impossible void and found somebody familiar. 

There was nobody whose mind and soul were quite like Steve Rogers. It was the resolution of him, the understanding that he knew who he was, the commitment to it. Nobody else was so straight down the line honest. So dedicated to doing what was right, to never giving up. Wanda knew a lot of amazing people. 

But nobody quite like Steve. Wanda stepped forwards, standing now at the head of the group of Avengers. Stephen Strange stood behind her, and Sam and Bucky flanked her Crimson stayed around her hands and lit up her eyes. She threatened scarlet magic through everybody there. Janet Van Dyme smiled and put an arm around Hope, a hazy glow surrounding the palms of her hand. Then she went to Peter Quill and laid her hand on his arm. He gasped, but he didn't flinch back. Mantis's antenae lit up and she gasped, Drax supporting her with a hand behind her back as she swayed. A faint purple flash ran over the new suit T'Challa was wearing, and she could feel him smiling behind the mask as he flexed his fingers and extended vibarnium claws. Wanda looked around to find them all ready, and she half expected Loki to make an appearance. But she couldn't wait for him. Her powers connected her to every person here - and some beyond. 

"Sam first. Steve's listening." She instructed, and every single person there listened to her. Even Drax. 

Sam took a deep breath and lifted a hand to his comms, which hadn't been there a minute or a lifetime ago.

"Cap." He cleared his throat, smiled nervously, and at a nod form Bucky he tried again. "Cap. Can you hear me?" 

He looked back and searched Wanda's face for a clue. She smiled at him and raised her left hand, pointing for Stephen to create a specific portal, and Sam got it. 

He snapped out his wings and flew right for the portal. "On your left."


	4. I Just Feel You

"Nice haircut." Wanda sniffled into Clint's shirt front, trusting his arms would hold her up. She heard the faint scoff run through him - but she could also feel the agony. She didn't want to look inside his head and see, exactly, what he'd done to bring him to this point.  
  
But Wanda had an idea anyway.    
  
Nestled against Clint she could pretend it was all the way it used to be. That she wasn't expecting Loki to magically appear to weasel a favor our of her. She was honestly surprised he'd kept out of things so far. She was going to have to try and find somebody who knew Thor better than she did to break this news. How did you even start to approach a conversation like that?  
  
No matter that they had won, nothing of course, was the same. The first big hurdle for Wanda was Steve's funeral, exactly a week after Tony's. Steve told them he knew that his time was finally up, that he had come back to be with them for his final days. It was a small affair, the funeral, only the team, though there would be a much larger memorial the following day. Bucky and Sam were inconsolable, and it was a difficult time for Wanda as well. Steve was the first to see something in her and Pietro that nobody else did. She knew she would never forget him, and would now spend the remainder of her life fighting to honor what he had taught her an the beliefs he held dear to. And in turn, she wanted to one day teach Nathanial, and any other young Avengers ready to take their place in the world as she had.  
  
She spoke only at his private funeral, leaving the memorial up to the others.  
  
  
"I remember when he showed up to save Vision and I in the subway station. I remember knowing before I could see him, that he had come for us. Because that was what he did. He saved us. He saved _everybody_. He saved my brother, and myself, and I will never forget that."  
  
  
Late that night, the sunset had long since faded, and and owl called softly as it winged otherwise silently overhead. She did a sweep of the area with her powers, staring out over the reflection of stars lake. Soon it would be time to go back to compound with Sam and Bucky, and help rebuild. To keep the team going, like Steve wanted her to. Nobody could have asked for a better teacher, Wanda thought fondly, brushing away a tear. But for now, she was alone.  
  
Wanda closed her eyes and waited. This time, when the voice came, it was a distant echo in her mind, somebody calling to her from a great distance. But it was an audible one. She could hear the strains of emotion in the voice she knew better than any other, the hope, the fear, the isolation.  
  
_Wanda? Wanda, can you hear me?_  
  
A smile somehow both grim and rejoicing lit up Wanda's face as a tiny scarlet gleam flickered in her pupils. She answered immediately.  
  
_Vision. I feel you. Don't be afraid. No matter how long it takes - I'll find you. I promise you Vis, we'll get you back._  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhangers are mean aren't they? Hopefully we'll get more on this during Wanda and Vision's TV show which I've only been thinking about oh I don't know, round the clock?  
> Love to all my readers, kudosers and especially commenters. And to every fellow Marvel Fan on the same journey as I am.


End file.
